Family Circle
by Eve Levine
Summary: "Okay, you hold the crayon and I'll hold you, and Momma and Abel can make a fish together."  Pre-season four.  One-shot.


_A.N.- Loving the new season and all of the sweetness so far, and dreading the doom spiral that seems to be waiting around the corner for all of the characters. Who, by the way, belong completely to Kurt Sutter. I own nothing. I will finish the multi-chapter Jax/Tara fic soon, for those still interested, but this bit of fluff between Tara and Abel popped into my head after getting a good look at the new décor in the Teller-Knowles household. Next one-shot planned is about Piney, but I need to do some research about his cranky self before I really dig into that one. _

_This one is for the all of the ladies on the thread. You know who you are. *hugs*_

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><p>"<em>What shape do you make the dog's head?" <em>Tara's mom asks from her spot in front of her easel.

"_Triangle." _Tara answers. She's sitting at the coffee table in their living room, sketch pad and crayons spread out before her.

"_Okay, now what about his body?"_

"_It's an oval." _Tara says.

"_Don't forget the four rectangles for legs." _Her mom continues and Tara feels all of the impatience and bravado of a seven year old artist well up inside of her.

"_But a dog isn't really an oval, or a triangle, or four rectangles, Momma. It's harder than that to make it look right."_

"_I know baby, but you've got to start with the basic shapes, and once you have those you can adjust them to look however you want. You have to learn how to see, before you can learn how to draw."_

Tara has no idea what that means, but she continues making her dog until her mom peeks over her shoulder.

"_Why'd you make him brown, baby?" _She asks. _"You don't like brown."_

"_But most dogs are brown," _Tara answers and her mom smiles at her.

"_The water is always blue and the leaves are always green, and the strawberries are always red for you, aren't they?" _She puts a kiss on Tara's forehead._ "This mind in here is brilliant, and very literal."_

"I'm making hotel art," Tara says to herself with a sigh as she stares at the half finished canvas on the easel in her living room. It's her mother's easel, dug out of the piles in her father's house. Tara set it up shortly after Jax went inside, when she was learning how to take care of Abel by herself, when her belly was getting rounder, when she was trying to sweep away the horror of the last few months and find a sense of peace. Not that Tara has a lot of time for peaceful moments, but she manages to carve out a couple of minutes every few days to paint.

Abel, whose naps are shorter than Thomas' likes to color. A few months back he began pulling his coloring books and his crayons over to sit next to her easel, and Tara couldn't say why, but seeing him stretched out on the floor, leaving haphazard streaks of color across his paper, and looking up every so often to seek her approval, created an ache deep in her marrow for her own mother.

The ache went away the day Abel grew frustrated with his hands, when he couldn't get the picture in his head to match the picture on his paper. He tossed his book and didn't want to draw or color anymore. He wasn't throwing a tantrum, he was disappointed, and Tara found herself scooping him up book and all, and heading for the kitchen table. She plopped him into her lap and shook all of the crayons out of the box before the memory hit her. It was old, covered in gauze, one of her earliest. It was what her mother did for her when she was Abel's age and she wanted to make pretty pictures.

"Do you want Momma to help?" Tara asked him, and when he nodded, she grabbed a red crayon and put it in his hands. "What do you want to make baby?"

"Fish," Abel answered and Tara took his hand in hers.

"Okay, you hold the crayon and I'll hold you, and Momma and Abel can make a fish together."

Tara could almost feel the ghost of her own young hand, small and clumsy, inside the steady grip of her mother's as she guided Abel's little one across the paper. And listening to Abel's peals of excitement for the fish swimming out of their fingertips and into his book, repeating this ritual with him, transformed the longing ache into something softer, something sweet, something to look forward to.

Abel hasn't decided which hand he's going to favor, switching hands to suit his mood, and he has no interest in realistic colors. His pumpkins can be purple and his grapes can be orange and Tara's trying to learn a thing or two from Abel, mixing it up with her color palate, because what bugs her about her own paintings is their precision. They're pretty and controlled, and the best ones go on the wall, but there's a messy chaos inside her head that never quite makes it to the canvas. Her soul isn't peeking out in her art and that makes it safe. And Tara knows in art, safe means boring.

Abel wanders out carrying his blanket and his box of crayons, and Tara smiles to herself because she's found him more than once sleeping with that box wrapped in his arms like it was a teddy bear.

"Wanna play?" Abel says as he rubs his eyes.

"Sure, Abel." Tara leaves her painting to pick him up and take him into the kitchen. She and Abel settle together on one of the kitchen chairs. "Do you want to color or do you want to draw?" Tara asks and Abel decides he wants them both to draw on the same page.

"Abel draw Momma," he says, and when Tara asks who she should draw, he pats his chest and says, "Abel."

"Should I add Thomas?" Tara wants to know. Abel nods and continues his work.

"What about Daddy? Do you want to draw Daddy?" Tara asks after she puts the finishing touches on the little bean shaped bundle meant to be Thomas. Abel's shoulders slump and his hands fall into his lap.

"Daddy gone," Abel says, his voice solemn. Tara feels like she should have seen this one coming when they started the family picture. She knows he's a resilient kid. Abel is so young and their weekly visits at the prison have become his norm, his reality. He seems to accept that he only gets to see Daddy on Saturdays, but as the months pass and Abel's awareness grows, they need to talk it through every so often.

"Daddy's gone, but we're going to see him tomorrow." Tara says and cuddles Abel closer to her.

"Want Daddy here. Abel want Daddy now." He says and Tara feels a new kind of ache. It's not the ache of a child for her mother, it's the ache of a mother for her child. She runs her hand over his hair and kisses his temple. Then she folds down and wraps herself around him to talk quietly in his ear.

"I know you do baby. Momma misses him too. But he'll be home soon, and then he'll be here every day. Would you like that?" She asks and Abel's hand reaches up to twirl the ends of her hair.

"When?" He asks and Tara doesn't know how to begin to explain the concept of one more month to a toddler.

"Before you know it Abel," is the best she can come up with, and that isn't good enough. She needs to get a smile out of her little guy. "Hey, I have an idea. Do you want to finish the picture and then maybe give it to Daddy when we see him tomorrow?"

Abel nods and sits up, squirming out of the hug. The moment of sadness passes as quickly as it arrived. Abel's eyes are lit up with excitement when he cranes his neck back to look at her. "Momma help." He orders reaching for his crayons again.

"What do you say?" Tara asks automatically and she smiles when she gets the correct response.

"Please." Abel says.

"Thank you, Abel. What color is Daddy's hair?"

"Blue!" Abel nearly shouts and Tara hushes him and muffles her laughter so they don't wake up Thomas.

"Daddy's hair is yellow," she can't resist saying and holds up the yellow crayon for Abel to see. "But you can make his hair any color you want. Daddy might like to see himself with blue hair." She grabs the light blue and the dark blue crayons and holds them up in front of Abel.

"Which one do you want to use for Daddy's hair?" She asks and Abel taps her hand holding the light blue one.

"This one."

"Okay, which hand do you want to use?" She asks and Abel holds up his right hand. Tara wraps her fingers around Abel's little ones and like always, he is delighted by the picture flowing out onto the paper.

"Abel and Momma make best pictures." Abel says happily and Tara kisses him again.

"Yes we do. Okay baby, Daddy needs a head under all of that blue hair. What shape is Daddy's head?" She asks and Abel bounces for a second on her lap, thinking of the answer. Tara helps him out a little, tapping on the faces of the already drawn figures of herself and Abel.

"Circle!" He says triumphantly, and even though it sounds more like "charcoal" than "circle," Tara knows what he means.

He wiggles from side to side as Tara congratulates him on getting the right answer. But Abel goes very still as they put the crayon to paper. His concentration shows in the little tongue poking out of the side of his mouth, and Tara smiles over his head as she and Abel complete the circle.


End file.
